If She Had Plunged the Knife
by FlawlessCatastrophe
Summary: What if Clove had killed Katniss? What if Rue hadn't died? What if Foxface never ate the berries? A collection of Hunger Games one-shots. Each chapter is 1000 words long.


"Where's your Lover Boy?" Clove giggles cruelly, holding up her steel knife at a wicked angle. It gleams in the fading light of the sun trickling down the horizon. Once the sun goes down, so does this life.

Katniss thrashed, trying to distract her for a moment of escape, but she wasn't succeeding. "He's coming. _Peeta!"_ She was hoping, that maybe Peeta had heard her and was stumbling along his bloodied leg.

Clove whipped around, wide-eyed, believing the lies Katniss had spoken of for a split second. Katniss decided to take advantage of Clove's moment of weakness, but to no avail. " _Liar,"_ Clove seethed, eyes flashing. She pinned down Katniss's shoulders, and took another moment to taunt her and have a bit more fun. Cato had let her kill Katniss, after all, and Clove didn't plan on wasting it.

She expected Katniss to start screaming for help, start sobbing for her Lover Boy, but she simply lay still, closing her eyes as if she embraced her death. "Where should we start?" Clove cooed sickly sweet, praying to get a reaction out of Katniss before her demise. She plunged down the knife with a wind-breaking, lethal, movement, only to stop it right before Katniss's windpipe. "How about," she breathed, watching Katniss's gulps of air come in and out rapidly, "...your mouth?"

Perspiration beaded down the side of Twelve's skull. Clove watched in giddiness as it traced the outline of her jawline, dripping off her chin.

Katniss took another breath of the arena's precious air, desperate to live. For Prim, for Gale, for her mother. "You can't… you can't…"

"I can't what?" Clove asks innocently, although the glint in her eyes said otherwise. "Kill you…?"

With that, Clove simply dug the knife in the tender flesh, sinking in the blade further. It wasn't fatal, but enough to make the pitiful girl's eyes widen with fear. A bead of crimson tears traveled down to her collarbone. Seeing the death liquid, Clove's murderer instinct instantly kicked in. She wanted to kill. She wanted to see the girl's cowardly face as she died, eyes rolling back and heart stopping.

Katniss couldn't take it anymore. She wanted out, out back in District Twelve with Prim in her arms. She started screaming, hoping someone, _anyone_ would come rushing to her and tear Clove's persistent body off her. Little did she know that Thresh had already broke off, with a bloodthirsty Cato following his tail. Katniss was all alone, no one to hear her cries except the mockingjays.

The murderer from Two smiled in pleasure. It was satisfying, hearing yet another fame-deprived tribute beg for mercy. A mercy they would not have. After all, in the Hunger Games, sacrifices must be made. The freezing blade simply kissed its way up to Katniss's lips, making the traced skin burst with fresh pain. With a quick, forced jerk to the left, the knife tore the skin hiding the jaw. Pints of the vital fluid now spilled from Katniss's cheek like a waterfall; a sick, gruesome waterfall. Katniss would not cry. She would not die without her dignity. She held in her tears as she waited patiently for the next torturous cut. Now all Clove had to do was make the smile even.

And make the smile even Clove did. She smirked as doing so, throwing away the Flame's life force as it was just nothing. Just a game, just another play toy. In the end, the supposed Girl on Fire turned into the Girl That Was Dying. Soon, when Clove and Cato came back to District Two, everyone would worship them and forget all about the girl who almost robbed them of their Victory. Clove would be praised for killing the only real competition, and everyone would know that.

Yes, everyone knew that. Including the District of Twelve. The cries of the poor, poor District could be heard from anywhere in Panem, their screams of rage as they watched their only chance- their only shot be killed by simply another murderous, foolish tribute from Two. As precious Katniss's death was being played on every screen in Panem, as Prim sobbed, as her mother stared, going into yet another depression at the loss of her daughter, as Gale's eyes widened and tried not to spill, as the rebellious Districts were crying in outrage, Clove kept on tracing. Tracing the lines of death.

Blood seeped from her mouth and neck and pooled onto the moist ground as if a pond. Katniss chose to stay silent, not mouthing a scream, nothing. She would not give Clove her satisfaction, not even in death. The silver eyes, that were once full of life, started to fade into oblivion. The light in her pupils was still there though, full of memories of her sister, her mother, her father. Her Gale, her Peeta, heck, even Lady and Buttercup. As she took her last, shallow breath, she smiled; smiled a genuine smile, not one forced by Clove's knife. Katniss went still for all eternity, the spark still in her eyes.

However, for Clove, the murderous glint in her eyes disappeared. Startled, she gasped, and lay her ear next to Katniss's heart. There was nothing. Her victim had crossed the bridge into the other world, leaving Clove with nothing but a stone cold body.

Enraged, Clove stuck the knife in Katniss's body over and over. She tried to search for a sign she was still alive, maybe a flutter of eyes or a soft breath. But nothing. Disgusted, Clove stood up and kicked the body, leaving a decaying bruise on the side of the ribcage.

She picked up her satchel, and made her way to find Cato once more and end these Games once and for all. To claim the best Victory Panem's ever seen for District Two.


End file.
